Thursday, December 08, 2005

Fundamentalist fever has hit the Metropolitan Council in Nashville, Tennessee. Time, energy, and money is now going to be wasted by the Council, which seems ready to complement very nicely Jerry Falwell's national crusade to save Christmas from being a holiday.

Rather than indict rampant consumerism of all but destroying the spiritual qualities of the Christmas season, Council members like Eric Crafton and Michael Craddock obviously intend to purify us from the ravages of observing "holy days." Or maybe the intention is to distract us from criticizing the corrosive effects of consumerism so that we will just keep semi-consciously buying crap in order to pump up less-than-impressive sales this Christmas. Crafton's resolution refers to the "Mass of Christ" ... does that mean we're all going to have to become good Catholics, too? That is, after all, the true, original context of "Christmas."

Since this is the season of hope, my hope is that Metro never puts up another decorated evergreen tree at the Riverfront roundabout again, because I think I've had about all of the Christmas cheer that I can stand this year; and we're not even halfway through advent.